Effective Questions

Effective Questions

A teacher's ability to ask meaningful questions while teaching is an important skill to master.

In fact, the questions a teacher asks during a lesson play an important role in a student's learning.

Just as we are able to use Bloom's Taxonomy to craft lesson or unit learning objectives, we can also use Bloom's Taxonomy as a guide for asking higher-order thinking questions.

When used effectively, teacher questioning can:

Activate prior knowledge

Promote critical thinking, and

Serve as a form of assessment

Think about a lesson or a topic you will be teaching this week. Now, think about some questions you might ask during that lesson. Find a piece of scratch paper and write down three questions that you could ask during this lesson.

When those questions are written, check to see if they are open-ended or closed-ended. Then, identify where each question falls into Bloom’s Taxonomy.

How did you do? If your questions were closed-ended, it's important to think about how you could change them into open-ended questions. Where did your questions fall within Bloom's Taxonomy?

By considering the level of questions within Bloom's, you can see if your questions are helping you meet your learning objectives.

In other words, if you have a higher-level learning objective, your questions should also be at a higher-level.